The Graphic Novel
ENGL 375TT [@UMW]
Wordbreaker's blog
The late, great X-Factor
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Well, here I am analyzing covers again for my favorite comics, but apparently this is what happens when I get bored. X-Factor is quite possibly one of the best books out right now and has gotten there under the careful guidance of Peter David as it's writer. Now, though, I'm not talking about writers, I'm talking lay-out. The first thing of importance that I notice here is the balancing of the M's on both Jamie Madrox and Layla Miller's cheek. These M's come from a future trip during the Messiah Complex and where give to the characters in basically mutant consentration camps. The parallel set up of these M's then are designed to hint at the most pivotal part of the inherent treachery. Here we have Layla with her hand on Doom's shoulder showing an inherent familiarity with him and Madrox, her one time, possible lover is on the ground with the rest of the team at least unconscious. Also, Layla's chewing of the bubblegum serves as both to show the reader that this is most likely Layla Miller as this level of ease has been a defining part of her character, and two to show her specifically at ease and in control of the situation around Doom.
Ben's Group Report for everyone to see
From a creative stand point the webcomic presented a lot of interesting challenges. First and foremost to me, as a writer, was the challenge of creating a functioning narrative in such a small amount of space. Normally, even with poetry, which is my chosen medium, I have a few stanzas and a couple hundred words in which to make a poem function, and even then the poem doesn’t necessarily have to have a narrative. With working on a joke a day webcomic, I was running into the challenge of how to tell a joke with no direction out side of the art and at most twenty-five words spoken. It was a much stronger basis on visual art then I was used to, as the image is what primarily carries the text. Read more . . .
Mostly, when working on these comics, I found myself focusing on the punch line first, feeling that the comic needed to end funny or it wouldn’t be funny. The next step was figuring out how the comic was going to lead up to the punch line and mapping out that. The one nice thing about working within the joke a day medium is that I never had to worry about segueing out of the joke, namely the comic could end instead.
Metacomics, starring Rocket Raccoon
Cosmic Marvel, since it’s reboot about two years ago has been about bucking the system of modern comics and returning back to a more simple area of epic stories of good versus evil as opposed to heroes fighting heroes in an attempt at heavy handed social commentary. Under the hands of Danny Abnet and Andy Lanning, it has returned to traditional super hero and team books that have completely revamped old failed characters and made them awesome, more often then not with a tongue in cheek approach to the genre.
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Using Darkness
Especially when discussing “Moonshadow” we’ve talked heavily about what is done with color and space and how the art in comics is stylized. What we haven’t talked about all that much, and when properly utilized is incredibly effective, is the use of dark in comics. Take this example from the comic adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, written by Roberto Aguierre-Sacasa and drawn by Mike Perkins. During the scene from which this page is taken, most of the population of the world is dead, and Larry Underwood has run into the problem that he needs to get through the Lincoln Tunnel and out of New York, but when most of the world died so did the infrastructure and so this tunnel has no power.
(Image will be up as soon as I can figure out how to work my scanner)
What Perkins does here is play with the sense of claustrophobia by utilizing black and dark spaces. In the book, this is a claustrophobic scene but that is alleviated by the lack of illustrations. The comic form, however, is faced with a challenge of not having the luxury of just describing what’s going on. Read more . . .
Multiple Authors/One Character starring Starlord
(picture will be inserted here as soon as i get to a scanner) Read more . . .
